Learn the JavaScript Basics

Learn JavaScript The Right Way

Hi, welcome to my blog. I’m a full-stack web developer who loves JavaScript. My goal with Matw.me is to create an easy-to-read and informative JavaScript reference that covers the core essentials of JavaScript.

I plan to accomplish this by starting with the basics, and adding higher level concepts only after the base knowledge is laid down.

– Matthew Wilson

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If you want to learn JavaScript from scratch, these posts should get you off to a good start.

Serverless architecture gives us an easy way to stand up an API without having to worry about managing a server. Like most decision, the decision to use serverless comes with a host of pros and cons; experience is here, ultimately the best teacher. Let’s make a simple API using AWS Lambda and API gateway services …

The previous post showed how to select and edit every paragraph element on a page adding a smiley face to each paragraph, but we run the code by entering it directly in the Javascript console. How can we run a section of JavaScript code when something happens? Often we want a section of JavaScript code …

This is a continuation on previous posts, Using JavaScript to Select HTML Elements, & How to use JavaScript to Interact With HTML Webpage. This will cover selecting HTML elements by tag names. Note that I am ignoring some best practices for the sake of simplicity. As a website loads, nodes (sections) of the page get loaded into the document object. …

One of the most common uses of JavaScript to manipulate elements on a web page. As we learned in the interact with the DOM post, the fist step to manipulating an HTML element is selecting it. The document object that is built into web browser’s JavaScript provides multiple methods that can be used to select …

This post will show you how to open and use Chrome devTools on a desktop or laptop computer The console and inspector were essential to me as a beginning developer and after 10 years experience I still use it almost daily. First step (using Chrome) right click on your screen. Anywhere within the browser should …

Strings Strings are sequences of characters. In the previous post, we saw how to open the Chrome devTool inspector panel. In the console tab, we can enter numbers and use the console as a basic calculator. When dealing with numbers in Javascript, we do not place quotes around them, but when entering strings, they must …

In the previous post, we went over strings and variables, but we need methods to organize our strings and variables. If we were going to the grocery store, we would not write bananas on one piece of paper, bread on another, milk, eggs, cheese, etc each on separate pieces of paper. This would become very …

Previous posts have covered strings, numbers, and arrays. Arrays can help organize related strings and numbers into a list-like behavior, but finding items in the list can be a bit difficult. Javascript offers one more method to organize data called an “object”. Objects store and retrieve items using a key – value system. For example, …